WebProNews » Algorithmhttp://www.webpronews.com
Breaking News in Tech, Search, Social, & BusinessTue, 31 Mar 2015 22:07:45 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.8.1Google’s Ad Related Algorithm Update Analyzed By Expertshttp://www.webpronews.com/googles-ad-related-algorithm-update-analyzed-by-experts-2012-01
http://www.webpronews.com/googles-ad-related-algorithm-update-analyzed-by-experts-2012-01#commentsFri, 20 Jan 2012 21:08:38 +0000http://www.webpronews.com/?p=91062We’ve covered the topic of Google’s latest update, and tried to raise important questions regarding the implications of the update. What do the experts in the field of SEO have to say regarding this update?

There’s one specific aspect of this topic that many experts have been questioning, and it’s whether or not Google is being hypocritical in regards to their latest algorithm changes penalizing sites with too many ads above the fold.

Danny Sullivan, of Searchengineland, went in-depth into this and looked at a couple of results pages which featured a good amount of ads above the fold. I thought his analysis was very interesting,

The blue box surrounds the content, the search listings that lead you to actual merchants selling trash cans, in this example. Some may argue that the Google shopping results box is further pushing down the “real content” of listings that lead out of Google. But the shopping results themselves do lead you to external merchants, so I consider them to be content.

According to Danny, Google also released a statement in regards to the criticisms they received involving their own ads…

This is a site-based algorithm that looks at all the pages across an entire site in aggregate. Although it’s possible to find a few searches on Google that trigger many ads, it’s vastly more common to have no ads or few ads on a page.

Again, this algorithm change is designed to demote sites that make it difficult for a user to get to the content and offer a bad user experience.

Having an ad above-the-fold doesn’t imply that you’re affected by this change. It’s that excessive behavior that we’re working to avoid for our users.

Many of the users on WebProWorld had interesting input regarding the subject.

Many responses have been in support of Google. Jeff Dishman, a Google employee said this of the ads presented on results pages, in a conversation involving the subject on Sullivan’s Google+ post.

when the post says “sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be affected by this change”, you can consider the ads at the top of a Google search to be “content”. It all comes down to relevancy; if someone is searching for credit cards, those ads at the top are likely to be something they are interested in. Also, the fact that this change will affect less than 1% of searches means that it’s targeted at sites that blatantly throw a ton of ads (where they are not relevant at all) at you in a way that will drive people away.

I know this probably won’t do anything to change the way you feel about this, but thought it was worth saying. *Disclaimer* – these are my views, and are not necessarily the views of my employer.

Another interesting aspect of this is how Google Adsense tells users that ads above the fold tend to do better. Providing users a chart of “hotter” areas to place ads.

To be fair, they also say Adsense users should place visitors first when determining ad placement and quantity.

Another WebProWorld user had an interesting take on the battle between Google’s ad network and improving their results page:

I nearly found myself in total despair of finding the correct word that describes googles arm wresting with itself. (left hand battling the right)

The right word may possibly a derivation of the word dyslexic
(dys·lex·i·a (d s-l k s – ). n. A learning disorder marked by impairment of the ability to recognize and comprehend written words.)

I like – dysgooglic (dys-goog-lic. A self inflicted disorder marked by a total impairment of any understanding of things it already understands.

or ‘Dysglooglic’ – biting your own balls syndrome.

It seems the consensus is that Google isn’t necessarily doing anything wrong with their algorithm update, in fact it’s a benefit to users. However, the lack of details regarding the changes along with their strategies given to Adsense users certainly provides plenty of questions.

]]>http://www.webpronews.com/googles-ad-related-algorithm-update-analyzed-by-experts-2012-01/feed2How Is Google’s Algorithm Update Determining “Ads Above The Fold”?http://www.webpronews.com/how-is-googles-algorithm-update-determining-ads-above-the-fold-2012-01
http://www.webpronews.com/how-is-googles-algorithm-update-determining-ads-above-the-fold-2012-01#commentsFri, 20 Jan 2012 18:08:26 +0000http://www.webpronews.com/?p=90896Less ads intruding on quality content, it’s a simple concept – right? When the majority of us visits a website, we’re visiting to get something we want. When an obstacle is in our way from the main goal, we tend to get upset. Obviously, Google doesn’t want to feature the sites that make their users upset. Sounds like a simple enough formula.

We’ve seen Google’s answer to the problem of clogging ads above the fold; by way of an algorithm update. The two words that site owners and SEO experts dread like the Ghost of Christmas Future.

As with many algorithm updates, the problem rests with the general and arbitrary information shared to everyone regarding it. Looking at the original blog post regarding the update, I could paraphrase it as such: “We’re rolling out an algorithm update which will penalize websites with too many ads above the fold, it should affect 1% of searches globally”

If you’re a user then you’re probably clapping and cheering Google for this update. If you’re an SEO expert, or an owner who’s sole income comes from a website or group of websites then depending on how neurotic you are, you’re either slightly concerned or freaking out.

The reason for the concern is so much of a site’s success is dependent on key points of data, and many times specific numbers, ratios, and trends involving this data. When generalities are used, it’s hard to gauge what is needed in order to be successful.

Which is why so many owners and experts become concerned when they encounter an update such as this one. Questions like this instinctively arise:

- How many ads are too many? Is there a specific number?

- If it isn’t based on the number of ads, is it based on the amount of space they take up? Is one huge ad as penalized as a site with a lot of smaller ads?

- Is there a specific resolution Google uses to determine where the fold actually is? If so, what is the resolution?

- Is Google only targeting Adwords, or is there a collective database of ad networks they’re targeting? Is there a shared element in various ad codes where they’re able to determine what is or isn’t an ad?

Depending on your level of concern, these questions feature an assortment of capital letters and other colorful words. Let’s do a quick visual exercise to dig deeper into this update.

First, where do intersticial ads and pop-ups come into play regarding this update? Really, they’re the Men-in-Black of ads when talking about layout, as they work outside the system. However, they can be just as intrusive if not more so than banners and other page ads.

Which would be considered worse in Google’s update?

This, IGN’s front page which has a single ad that expands to take up nearly half the page (based on where the fold is on my screen) …

Or, Rottentomatoe’s front page which has a banner, video ad, and a background ad? In terms of “being above the fold”, the content/ad ratio isn’t technically as bad.

You then have Forbe’s strategy which loads a timed intersticial, an ad that gets its very own page. How is Google viewing this in their new update?

The matter of intersticial and pop-ups brings a whole new element into the mix. Is Google penalizing sites on ad/content ratio averages, or are they targeting specific pages? Certainly, if they’re only targeting specific pages when they’re penalizing then having interstitials and pop-ups seems like it would be more beneficial to a site than relying on trying to gauge how many ads above the fold is too many.

In conclusion, after all the questioning and worrying, the mantra of Google still rings true – try to create the greatest user experience possible. There is definitely a common sense element at play, but we still don’t know where the line is and if a site is even crossing it.

]]>http://www.webpronews.com/how-is-googles-algorithm-update-determining-ads-above-the-fold-2012-01/feed8SEO Experts React To Google Algorithm Updatehttp://www.webpronews.com/seo-experts-react-to-google-algorithm-update-2011-11
http://www.webpronews.com/seo-experts-react-to-google-algorithm-update-2011-11#commentsFri, 04 Nov 2011 21:20:46 +0000http://www.webpronews.com/?p=79852I’m not sure what other writers are calling Google’s algorithm update, as we’ve only had it for a day. I’m staying with the KISS (keep it simple stupid) method, and calling it “Google Fresh“. No doubt, SEO experts, webmasters, and even users will feel the effects of Google Fresh, with many of those people voicing their opinions on the changes. In fact, many have already sounded off. Let’s take a look at what they’ve had to say.

SEOMoz’s Rand Fishkin, is the only responder I’ve seen who’s released a video concerning the update. He discussed the changes with Mike King of @iPullRank. One of the most important takeaways from the video is how they believe timestamps, specifically in the XML sitemaps could see a boost in terms of importance. A trend you’ll notice as you read more reactions.

Gianluca Fiorelli, of I Love SEO calls the update, “Caffeine 2.0″ and shared some interesting thoughts about how this change was brought about by advertising needs. Claiming that Google is driven by ad space, and needed to make changes to reflect this:

“Google is an substantially an editor (even it will never recognize it) that sells ad spaces, and Search is still its main product to sell toward the advertiser. So Google needs to have the best product to continue selling ad space. That product was ironically endangered by Caffeine. With Panda Google tries to solve the content issue and with the Social Signals linked inextricably to the Authors and Publishers tries to solve the obsolescence of the Link Graph.”

Ben Will, an author over at Marketing Pilgrim, has already devised strategies to succeed from the Google Fresh changes. He makes note that having correct and up-to-date time-stamps is of utmost importance, like Fishkin and King stated above. However, one of his strategies struck me as interesting. Adding forums.

Forums…the original social network. The benefits are the fluid conversations that happen. The downsides are that forums require a fair amount of work to be managed. Choose this option carefully.

One aspect of this change which I saw go unnoticed by most is how it will impact paid search. Jeff Allen, of PPCHero, believes the changes will have an important impact.

“Google didn’t specify if this change would have an impact on paid search. However, their trend has been towards narrowing the gap between organic and PPC. Because of this, I would venture to guess it will have some impact in the future. Time will tell, but my guess is that advertisers in verticals affected by these changes (such as eCommerce sites selling SLR cameras) will want to keep their content fresh.”

As I’ve read reactions, it seems to me that this could potentially be the most subtle algorithm update Google has released. Most of the strategies I’ve read in reaction to Google Fresh, are ones most have been trying to follow for quite some time. It’s always been about producing relevant content, and doing so on a consistent basis. If your site is based around a topic which doesn’t require timely updates, then this change probably won’t have an effect. That is if Google’s claim concerning recency only affecting certain topics holds true. On the flip side, if your site relies on current events or timely topics, you’re probably giddy about this update.

Have you noticed any changes in your results, since the Google Fresh update went live? Do you see vast potential for your site from Google placing more relevance on freshness?

Update: There have been more reactions to the algorithm update. There seems to be a divide over whether or not Google putting relevance on freshness will indeed provide better quality for readers. Most of the skepticism comes from those are unsure whether or not Google will know when recency should truly be important.

A user from WebMasterWorld had an interesting reaction to the update, “So you think the pro staffed sites have been at an advantage before? How about now? On the surface, this looks like the dagger for a lot of folks. Hope I’m wrong. A small enterprise of a few cannot compete with freshness of hundreds of staffers. I haven’t dug into this, but certainly this adds to the already pile of BS that a lot of us have been dealing with and now it’s another heaping truck full on my door step.

With all the changes, Google results must really have sucked. Guess it was a fluke to gain that market share on a system that so broke that it needs to be gutted. In real terms, there is something fundamentally wrong with ADD characteristics of a company that has 97% of mobile search and what 80%+ or regular search.”

Could the update lead to certain businesses creating blogs, simply for the aspect of showing up as a fresher result?

]]>http://www.webpronews.com/seo-experts-react-to-google-algorithm-update-2011-11/feed26Google Algorithm Update Focuses On Freshness and Recencyhttp://www.webpronews.com/google-algorithm-update-focuses-on-freshness-and-recency-2011-11
http://www.webpronews.com/google-algorithm-update-focuses-on-freshness-and-recency-2011-11#commentsFri, 04 Nov 2011 15:45:53 +0000http://www.webpronews.com/?p=79819At the rate information is transferring, it seems like a losing game to try and stay current on everything that is occurring. However, it’s exactly what Google is planning with their latest algorithm update. Simply put, they’re trying to make sure their search results are recent and fresh.

According to Google, nearly 35% of searches will be impacted by this update. It’s building upon their Caffeine system, which they touted as a better way to crawl and index more quickly and on a larger scale. They provided the keyword “olympics” as an example.

“If I search for [olympics], I probably want information about next summer’s upcoming Olympics, not the 1900 Summer Olympics (the only time my favorite sport, cricket, was played). Google Search uses a freshness algorithm, designed to give you the most up-to-date results, so even when I just type [olympics] without specifying 2012, I still find what I’m looking for.”

There are three key features being highlighted in the update:

Recent events or hot topics. For recent events or hot topics that begin trending on the web, you want to find the latest information immediately. Now when you search for current events like [occupy oakland protest], or for the latest news about the [nba lockout], you’ll see more high-quality pages that might only be minutes old.

Regularly recurring events. Some events take place on a regularly recurring basis, such as annual conferences like [ICALP] or an event like the [presidential election]. Without specifying with your keywords, it’s implied that you expect to see the most recent event, and not one from 50 years ago. There are also things that recur more frequently, so now when you’re searching for the latest [NFL scores], [dancing with the stars] results or [exxon earnings], you’ll see the latest information.

Frequent updates. There are also searches for information that changes often, but isn’t really a hot topic or a recurring event. For example, if you’re researching the [best slr cameras], or you’re in the market for a new car and want [subaru impreza reviews], you probably want the most up to date information.

As with all algorithm updates, there are some problems with the changes. The first is structuring it in such a way that it recognizes when results need to be fresh, and when being current isn’t a requirement. They assure users that the improvement is being designed to know when freshness is an important factor.

As with all algorithm updates, we’ll all be sitting in anticipation to see how this will impact both webmasters and users.

Yahoo disclosed the latest update taking place for its search engine today. Priyank Garg and Sharad Verma said on the Yahoo Search blog they were rolling out various changes to their algorithms.

Crawling, indexing, and ranking should all see changes over the next few days. The post comes a day ahead of another announcement, Yahoo’s Q1 2008 financials, which takes place April 22 after market close.

Part of the update included a fix for an issue being reported by several webmasters to Yahoo. Some encountered problems deleting URLs from Yahoo’s Site Explorer.

Garg wrote that the issue in question has been fixed. As always when a search engine drops some updates into its secret sauce, rankings for sites may have changed. Site publishers should check in to Yahoo over the next few days to see if their websites endured any such changes.

]]>http://www.webpronews.com/yahoo-continues-search-update-2008-04/feed2Google’s Search Gurus Spill Algorithm Beanshttp://www.webpronews.com/googles-search-gurus-spill-algorithm-beans-2007-06
http://www.webpronews.com/googles-search-gurus-spill-algorithm-beans-2007-06#commentsMon, 04 Jun 2007 19:18:44 +0000http://www.webpronews.com/?p=38161Ok, so the New York Times doesn’t exactly get Google’s top algorithm execs to tell us how the search engine calculates search results, but they do get fresh insight as to how Google decides to update it’s technology.

The article includes interviews with Amit Singhal, Matt Cutts and Udi Manber.

Insights include details of Google’s internal system for evaluating search queries, called Debug.

The article includes interviews with Amit Singhal, Matt Cutts and Udi Manber.

Insights include details of Google’s internal system for evaluating search queries, called Debug.

At other times, complaints highlight more complex problems. In 2005, Bill Brougher, a Google product manager, complained that typing the phrase “teak patio Palo Alto” didn’t return a local store called the Teak Patio.

So Mr. Singhal fired up one of Google’s prized and closely guarded internal programs, called Debug, which shows how its computers evaluate each query and each Web page. He discovered that Theteakpatio.com did not show up because Google’s formulas were not giving enough importance to links from other sites about Palo Alto.

Boy, wouldn’t you like to get your hands on that little beauty?

Also, for the longest time, we’ve known that Google uses more than 100 variables in its algorithm. Since search has become more complex, that number has now been updated.

Mr. Singhal has developed a far more elaborate system for ranking pages, which involves more than 200 types of information, or what Google calls “signals.” PageRank is but one signal. Some signals are on Web pages — like words, links, images and so on. Some are drawn from the history of how pages have changed over time. Some signals are data patterns uncovered in the trillions of searches that Google has handled over the years.

]]>http://www.webpronews.com/googles-search-gurus-spill-algorithm-beans-2007-06/feed0Florida Update Plus One – The Year Google Grew Uphttp://www.webpronews.com/florida-update-plus-one-the-year-google-grew-up-2004-11
http://www.webpronews.com/florida-update-plus-one-the-year-google-grew-up-2004-11#commentsThu, 18 Nov 2004 16:32:23 +0000http://www.webpronews.com/?p=12833It has been a full year since the infamous Florida Update rewrote Google’s rankings with a massive pre-Christmas purge of previously well placed sites.

The update, which caught virtually everyone by surprise is assumed by most to be the introduction of semantic contextualization software added to a variation of the Hilltop Expert Document Algorithm. It took Google about six to eight weeks to re-establish stable listings and they took a savage beating in the SEO press during that period. For a short time it looked like the shift was a failure with spammy sites and “big-box” stores dominating the Top listings but after a while Google’s listings began to make sense again.

The inclusion of Hilltop added great weight to certain types of links and as Mike Banks Valentine pointed out, radically cut the value of reciprocal links. Incoming links were the meat and potatoes of PageRank but five years of commercialization had turned them into junk food. Googlebot needed a better diet and direct one way reference links from “credible” and relevant sites is considered much healthier spider-food than the junk peddled by fast-link dealers or cooked up in kitchen-sink sites between friends.

The Florida Update effected more than site rankings in the SEO industry. New businesses sprang up finding, buying and selling links as SEOs and site owners became obsessed with PageRank values and link-building. Savvy site designers and a few SEOs began producing instant expert sites, using them as “back-door leader-pages” designed to drive spiders rather than attract them. Websites with incoming links from “authority sites” such as news-sites, major forums and other high PageRank properties started to rank better than they had before, thus increasing the value and popularity of these authority sites.

Perhaps the greatest effect of the Florida Update was the sudden rise in the popularity of BLOGS. As explained in dozens of articles over the past two months, Blogs have become big, primarily because of their extraordinary effect on link-densities at Google. When a thousand bloggers rapidly create links to a specific website or Blog entry, that site or entry rapidly rises in the rankings. Proof of this phenomena is found in the results of both Google Ranking contests held earlier this year. The winner in both cases harnessed the power of keyword enriched anchor text-links from thousands of Blogs.

It is easy to speculate on Google’s commercial interest in promoting incoming links from Blogs and news-sites. Google owns the biggest Blog software developer, Blogger, and has AdWords/AdSense being displayed across many “authority sites”. Google also controls the world’s most popular News-Search tools, Google-News. With the pressures of becoming a publicly traded company, Google needs to harness as many revenue sources as possible. When you control the environment, forcing a change in user behaviours may be simpler in the long run than waiting for change to happen organically. There may be some merit to this view. The people working for Google wouldn’t be the geniuses they are if they didn’t see the financial angles but after a year has passed, it appears the shift was motivated by much more complex changes happening at the Googleplex.

Google has a number of interesting features and has been busy acquiring the means to develop others. Through direct purchase of software (and often the companies that make it), innovative in-house development and the massive infusion of energy spurred by the IPO, Google has raced ahead of its competition in the past three months and is seen to be leading in just about every facet of search. It is rumoured to be developing a proprietary browser and may even be working on a proprietary operating system. The introduction of a semantic/context driven algorithm that values links from established authoritative sites has improved Google’s listings and provided the stability needed to integrate Google’s various features into a branded base of products. That many of the most beneficial incoming links originate from websites already involved with Google in one way or another, (aside from their own listings), more likely stems from chasing the brand as opposed to chasing the buck. Once the brand is established, the bucks tend to follow.

Google has established one of the most popular brands that has ever existed but that brand, in most consumer’s eyes, only extends to its search engine. Google’s founders have always stated that information-flow was their major focus. Information, is a bigger word than search and requires a larger vision to articulate. One year after the biggest shake-up in search engine history, Google is positioning itself to surpass simple search and grow into branded information provision.